Home
by SacredRoseDream
Summary: This shouldn't be happening. It couldn't be happening. Yet she could do nothing, wanted to do nothing as his body edged closer, his breath fanning her cheek.
1. Home

**Disclaimer: I do not own Kamisama Hajimemashita or the direct quotes taken from it.**

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**Home**

This shouldn't be happening. It couldn't be happening. Yet she could do nothing, wanted to do nothing as his body edged closer, his breath fanning her cheek. Close. So close. She could feel his heartbeat against her chest, could smell the scent of him. All heat and musk, edged with just the slightest sweetness of the sake he so often imbibed. It was intoxicating. It was invigorating. It was purely _Tomoe._

She turned her head, unable to face him, unable to stand the intensity of those dark eyes. He was beautiful. So beautiful. Yet feral. Wild. Like a beast untamed and still assured of his mastery. He looked at her as though he wanted to devour her. As though she were the only fruit in a long stretch of desert. Like something precious. _Necessary._

"_Hey_," he bade, "look over here." She tried to ignore it. Tried to ignore the silkiness of voice, the heat of his tone. It stabbed at her, stirring at desires she was too fearful to name. _Tomoe,_ her _Tomoe_, how often had she dreamed of this?

She felt it, his hands twining in her hair, a lover's caress. Then he was pulling, yanking, a sharp tug against her scalp, ornaments and pins tinkling to the floor. Even the violence of the action inflamed her. _This_, she reminded herself as he forced her gaze towards his, her eyes clamping shut, _is not my Tomoe._ No. This was the Tomoe of 500 years past. Hers and yet not hers. Not in the same way.

_Not at all._

Yet she couldn't help herself. Those hands, that face─they were all the same. The same _Tomoe_. Her same love. How could she not shudder as his hand slipped between the lapels of her kimono, claws edging delicately to slide beneath her _juban_ to touch the skin below? How could her breath not catch as his body caged hers, his knees brushing her legs?

_I shouldn't be allowing this. _She reminded herself, but there was no conviction. His breath stroked her skin, his lips rained kisses against her neck. Unwittingly, she felt her body relaxing against him, sensitive despite the poison. How she wished she could hold him! How she wished she could stroke through the smooth fabric of his kimono to the smoother skin beneath!

_Tomoe! Tomoe! _How she loved him!

Her neck angled upwards, her entire body lifting in invitation. His hands, those wicked, deft hands stroked her, pushing back the lapels of her clothes until they were gaping, and she felt his fingers brush against her chest, stopping inquiringly at the edge of her bra before circling a nipple. She bit back a cry, a half-whine escaping her lips.

It was too much. His bold administrations were undoing her.

She longed for him. _Burned_ for _him_. Her Tomoe with his sweet smelling hair and exotic face. Even the feel of him, pressed against her thigh, hard though their many layers didn't frighten her. Perhaps, just maybe, she couldn't be afraid of Tomoe. No. She loved him too much.

His kisses edged her jaw, a sharp bite of teeth against her chin as he slid to her ear, his hair whispering invitingly against her skin. She wanted to wrap her hands in it, the thick fall of his hair. All silk and sweetness. She wondered, what sound would he make if she pulled it? If she pulled him as he had her and peppered him with kisses?

"Look at me" he crooned, and even that was a caress, sinking beneath her skin and swishing into the hollows like waves into indents in the sand. "Look at me" he repeated, pleadingly. "Yukiji."

Her heart stuttered, her eyes snapping open and her, breath catching in her throat as horror struck through her freezing the blood that seemed to run so hot only moments before. _Yukiji. _Her mind repeated._ Yukiji! _Tears threatened, her eyes burning with the ache that now suffused her chest.

"_P-pl-e-ease_," she stuttered, finding it hard to speak as her throat tightened and breath felt far behind. "_Please_", she repeated, turning her face again, and this time she could not stop the tears. Could not overcome the feeling of heartbreak. "_D-don't look at me!_" She whimpered.

_Yukiji. _She was not Yukiji. Could never be Yukiji. Whoever he held in his mind, it wasn't her. Whatever moment he recalled so fiercely was not hers. She was only a stand-in, soon to be forgotten in the annals of time. Dejection burned, a cold fire even more blistering than the passion preceding it and she wondered what memories with the true Yukiji would he create?

"…Right now..." she whispered brokenly, ashamed at her jealousy, "I look awful…" She shook her head violently, thrashing, the denial burning through her. "Don't look at me…" Her voice rose. Stronger.

She wanted to scream it. Shout it. The words burned in her throat. _I am not Yukiji! Nanami! My name is Nanamii! _But she could not say a word. This man, no, this _demon_ who held her so tenderly, was not yet hers. He belonged to another, all too real in this current time. The events that had shaped him had not yet occurred.

"Please…_ Tomoe.._" She whispered, voice cracking in despair, and she struggled to move her arms, overcome with shame. She could not bear to look at him. Could not bear to see what expression lay within. Was it sympathy? Love? For _her? _Yukiji? The woman he thought she was? Was it disgust for the weakness she showed?

As though hearing her plight, she felt him gather her up, bringing her gently to rest against his chest. " _Don't_…" his voice was hesitant, bare of all the cockiness it had moments ago. "Don't cry." He said, his hands now stroking her back. Soothingly, gently, like a mother─no─like a lover. "_Don't cry_" he pleaded, voice soft. "I feel _insane_ when you cry." If anything the declaration made her cry harder, the tenderness, the f_eeling_.

How gentle he was, resting his hand on her head! How comforting!

Crying, more silently now, she sniffed into his kimono, breathing in the delicate scent of incense perfuming the fabric. It was so painfully familiar when combined with the scent of him. She smiled weakly, snuggling against his shoulder. _He smells like home, s_he thought. Suddenly, as though provoked by it, she became aware of the distant sound of rain, a reassuring _pit-pat_ repeating into the night. It lulled her, enticing her to breathe to that same patter. _Inhale. Exhale. _Softly. Slowly. Until she felt herself carelessly tumbling into sleep.

In his arms, she was home.


	2. Temple, Castle, Home

**Disclaimer: I do not own Kamisama Hajimemashita.**

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**Temple, Castle, Home**

He continued holding her, long after her breathing had slowed, long after the tears had dried, savoring the feel of her in his arms. She was so light, so delicate. Spun as though of the finest silk and the purest glass. But there was a fire in her. A power so vivid, so intense he was drawn to it like a moth to the flame.

He could hold her forever, burning in her flame until his bones turned to cinders, his body to ash. She was everything. His everything. His temple to worship. His castle to adore.

Yet this pose could not be good for her. It would strain her joints as surely as it would his, though even more painfully for the utter fragility of her humanity. Gently, he set her down, twisting so that she lay in the cradle of his arms, his shoulder her pillow, his body her futon.

She was beautiful. By far the most beautiful human he had ever seen. No, perhaps, the _only _beautiful human he had ever seen. Not for the sweetness of her cheeks or the delicate petals of her lips, not for the curves of her body, or the soft angles of her face. _No._ It was not her physical beauty that drew him, though she was beautiful still; it was her spirit. Burning, blistering, yet warm as the sun seeping into the grass. Captivated. He was captivated by the power glowing so fiercely in her eyes. So warm. So comforting. So unlikely anything he had called his own.

Almost beside himself, he felt his hands moving, tracing the slopes of her cheeks, the perfect contour of an eye. So human. So fallible. Yet so utterly entrancing in that paradox. How could a human be so strong?

He looked at her, truly looked at her, his mercurial eyes absorbing every facet of her, shamelessly taking advantage of her unconscious state. _Yukiji. His_ Yukiji. He would allow no other to have her! Could allow no other to have her! The fierceness of her nature, the gentility of her touch, it was his, only his. No other creature could appreciate her so.

He kissed her palm where it lay against his chest, reverent.

They were a beautiful contrast he thought, looking at the dark ebony strands mixing with the pristine white of his hair. A study in opposites somehow perfect together. His hand, where it now rested on her hand looked so pale to the peach of her skin. His body where it cradled her was so large in comparison to her own diminutive form. Yet she fit against him perfectly, molding against the contours of his flesh as though the kami themselves had cleaved out a part of him and set it aside within her.

Kissing her brow, he wondered, what magic was this that tamed him so? The unstoppable _kitsune_, the unconquerable _yokai_ that even the kami had sought to destroy. Where they had failed, this tiny, human woman had won, not with the strength of her arms, nor with skillful cunning, but with secret touches in the night. With the weight of her hand, anchoring him to reality. With her presence stilling his fear and the sweetness of her peach scent that surrounded him with a comfort he had never known.

_Home. _She felt like home, or what home, he imagined, could be.

Perhaps it was this that made him love her so. Quietly, unassumingly, she came to him, cared for him, asking for nothing, wanting nothing of him. So different was she from the _tanuki_ he surrounded himself with. So different from anyone he had ever known. To her he was simply _Tomoe _no more, no less.

But _no_, he thought as she shifted, the red of her inner kimono gaping a little where it rest against the deep charcoal of his own, it could not only have been then. He had been captivated long before, when she had looked at him so fearlessly and bit his fingertip. Such a warrior, this little human! She had only amused him then, but in the hours, days, weeks that they had remained apart, he thought of her more and more.

Each simpering human he met, he compared with her. The warriors kneeling at his feet, the bandits begging for his forgiveness, none of them compared with her. Even the housewife, struggling for her child, even as he left them, they continued to shake, trembling with fear as they scampered away. They sickened him with their cowardice. Why could they not look at him with the same intensity as she did? Why couldn't they see him as more than another demon, ushering in their death? They were nothing. Even _tanuki _he sated himself with were nothing. All their promises, all their platitudes, yet none of them looked at him with the feeling that _she_ did.

His left ear twitched. He could hear the rain intensifying, a sharp tattoo against the roof of the house, the walls creaking faintly in the wind. He looked at her then, recalling the weakness of her body and the poison in her veins. Was she cold? Was it the chill that made her tremble so finely or the delusion of his preoccupied mind? He held her closer, shifting so that her body pressed fully against his, opening his kimono to drape it over themselves, and she smiled, a slow sleepy smile.

_There_, he thought proudly, _she should be warm. _It pleased him, this little thing. This knowledge that it was his heat that warmed her, that it was his arms that protected her as surely from the chill as they would protect her from any other. So long as he breathed no one would harm her. Neither demon nor human nor kami! They would not harm her! He would never allow it!

Satisfied, he allowed his breaths to slow, his heart unconsciously matching her own, until his limbs slackened and his head came to rest upon her own. There, with her body tucked securely beneath his chin, he allowed himself to fall. Content, in her presence. Assured in her acceptance. Safe in her affection.

Relaxed, redeemed, and utterly _home._


End file.
